


Taco Bell Stopover

by Ionaonie



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, Fluff, Friendship, M/M, Pre-Slash, episode s03e316
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-25
Updated: 2011-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-28 03:06:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/303036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ionaonie/pseuds/Ionaonie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Morgan has a little chat with Reid about going to the movies...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Taco Bell Stopover

‘So, tell me about this movie, pretty boy.’

Morgan had somehow – and Spencer had no idea how – managed to get them alone in the car. The other four were in the SUV in front of them.

He blinked a couple of times, unable to decide if Morgan really thought he’d been to a movie or if he was calling Spencer’s bluff.

‘Oh, uh, it was...you know, umm, unmemorable.’ Well, if Morgan hadn’t known before that Spencer had been lying, he did now.

Morgan glanced over at him, raising an eyebrow. ‘So, not at the movies, then?’ His voice was casual but Spencer could hear the steel behind it that said he wasn’t about to let this go.

He sighed. ‘No, but then you already knew that.’ Slouching further into his seat, he rested his elbow on the edge of the door, rested his chin on his hand and stared moodily out of the window. What was it about Morgan that made him more willing to open up and talk about issues he was much happier trying to forget?

‘Yeah,’ agreed Morgan. ‘I knew.’

Watching the streets whiz by, Spencer waited for Morgan to demand to know where he’d really been. He could feel Morgan glancing at him occasionally, as if waiting.

‘Reid.’ Morgan’s voice was soft when he finally spoke. ‘You don’t have to tell me where you were, unless you want to. I...I just want you to know that you can talk to me about whatever, whenever you want.’

‘It’s not exactly easy to talk about anything personal at the office.’ He had tried in the past – every time with Morgan, now he thought about it – and he’d always been interrupted by a new case.

‘You have my cell number.’ Morgan made it sound so simple. Either that, or Spencer made it too difficult.

Spencer squirmed slightly, unsure how he was going to answer that. ‘I don’t want to be a nuisance.’ It was easier to admit those kinds of things when not looking at Morgan.

‘You aren’t a nuisance, Reid.’ Morgan sounded so sincere that it hurt somewhere deep in Spencer’s chest.

He turned to look at Morgan. ‘Never a nuisance?’ He didn’t believe that for a minute, Morgan was forever telling him he was being a pain.

Morgan didn’t even begin to crack a smile. ‘Never about this, kid. Never about this.’

‘Oh.’ He thought that through for a few minutes, aware that they were rapidly coming up on Quantico and his time to talk was decreasing. ‘It started after Jack Vaughan shot Ryan Philips.’

Morgan glanced at him, obviously trying to cover his surprise at the prospect of him actually talking instead of deflecting the question. ‘What started?’

Spencer pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. It wasn’t easy in the car, but he managed. ‘The craving.’

He was distracted by the idea that that sounded like the title of a really awful horror movie, so he didn’t immediately notice when Morgan pulled off the road into a Taco Bell. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m getting us food.’

‘But at Taco Bell?’

‘You got a problem with that, pretty boy?’

Spencer shook his head. ‘None.’ Apart from the fact that it was Taco Bell.

‘Good. Now chose what you want. I’m buying.’

Spencer rested his head on his knees and watched as Morgan manoeuvred the car into the drive-thru lane. Coming to a halt he pulled out his cell.

‘I’m just going to give Hotch a call. Let him know why we’re running a bit late.’

Spencer just nodded. Recently he had noticed an increase of the number of times Morgan called him ‘pretty boy’ and wondered what it meant. Normally, he’d say it was painfully obvious what it meant, but this was Morgan and it couldn’t mean that, especially since Morgan had been calling him that since his third week with the BAU.

‘Okay, Hotch, we’ll be back soon,’ promised Morgan and snapped his phone shut.

‘So before we went to Chula Vista you hadn’t felt the urge to take any more Dilaudid?’

‘The odd fleeting thought, maybe, but nothing serious.’

The car in front of them moved and Morgan put in their order, ordering for Spencer when he couldn’t make up his mind.

‘So what changed?’

Suddenly Spencer wasn’t so sure he wanted to talk. ‘Hey, did you know that-’

‘Reid,’ Morgan interrupted firmly, ‘we’re not talking about statistics. We’re talking about you.’

‘You need to pay.’

Morgan frowned. ‘What?’

He nodded at the teller, waiting to be handed money. ‘For the food, Morgan.’

‘Right. I knew that.’

Spencer suppressed a smile.

After paying for the food, Morgan pulled into a parking space and cut the engine.

‘I thought we were going back...’

‘Eating and driving at night is dangerous,’ said Morgan, before taking a huge bite out of his burrito.

‘But doing it during the day is fine,’ he said dryly.

‘Exactly.’

Spencer managed to eat half his burrito before the silence got too much for him.

‘I couldn’t talk Vaughan down.’ Spencer felt strangely safe here with Morgan. There was no-one else around to interrupt or listen; it was as if the outside world had momentarily fallen away. ‘I thought I had him, that I’d got through to him. I didn’t expect him to shoot Philips.’ He started to play with the hem of his cardigan. ‘I can’t get the sound out of my head. It’s not even the sight; although I can’t seem to get the look on his face out of my mind either, but the sound keeps echoing around my head.’ He sighed in frustration. ‘I don’t know if that even makes any sense.’

‘It makes perfect sense.’

As he had been talking, Spencer’s eyes had drifted down to Morgan’s chest. Now he brought them back up to meet Morgan’s eyes. His question must have shown on his face.

‘Don’t you remember what I told you about the eyes?’

Spencer nodded. He remembered being surprised that Morgan suffered from nightmares. He remembered being relieved that Morgan had nightmares because if Morgan had nightmares too, then that made it alright for Spencer to have them too. It didn’t make him weak. If anything, it made him normal for once in his life.

‘I wanted to forget those eyes so badly.’

‘What did you do?’

Morgan shrugged. ‘The usual. Tried getting drunk, but it didn’t work.’ He snorted. ‘If anything, it just made everything worse.’

Morgan took a long gulp of his coke, as if buying time to think. Morgan was charming and friendly to nearly everyone he met, but he didn’t share his private life or his personal thoughts all that often. Spencer knew that he was one of the few people Morgan would talk to, but he didn’t often volunteer information in an attempt to reassure Spencer. How, he was doing so twice in a couple of days. He still couldn’t quite believe that Morgan had been a skinny kid who got beat up every day.

‘I used to be in narcotics, so I knew where to go...’

Spencer couldn’t help the gasp that escaped his lips.

Morgan rolled his eyes. ‘Relax, Reid, I didn’t actually go looking.’

Spencer closed his eyes briefly as relief flooded through him. He couldn’t quite articulate how much the idea of Morgan being that low hurt him. ‘Good.’

‘What I’m trying to say is that I can well understand what drives you to consider such drastic actions. The desire to forget can be overwhelming.’

‘So, how did you forget in the end?’

‘I didn’t, kid. There is no magic answer.’ Morgan sounded as though he wished there was.

He sighed. ‘I had an inkling you were going to say that.’

‘You just use it to push you that little bit harder to catch the next unsub and save the next victim. Eventually the nightmares...well, they don’t go away, but they become less frequent. And when it gets too much, you talk to someone.’

‘Who do you talk to?’

‘If I need to talk about a case that really got to me, I go and see a therapist that Gideon put me in touch with. If I just need to talk, I either phone my mom, or sometimes one of my sisters if I really want to torture myself-’ He grinned ‘-or I annoy you.’

Spencer blinked. ‘Really? Me?’

‘Apparently so. Are you going to eat your taco?’

Spencer shook his head, distracted by the idea that he rated along with Morgan’s family.

Grabbing his taco, Morgan eyed him seriously. ‘So, what’s all this got to do with Owen?’

‘I didn’t want to see another person younger than me being killed.’ He was focusing on his sleeve that he was worrying between his finger and thumb.

‘Especially someone who you identified so strongly with,’ added Morgan softly. ‘You know, apart from the murder spree thing.’

‘Yeah, thanks, I got that,’ he said dryly.

‘Did it help, talking Owen down?’

He nodded. ‘It made me believe I can do it.’

‘What? Talk people down?’

Sucking on his straw, he nodded.

Morgan looked worried. ‘Reid, you, better than anyone know that the rate of probability means that you can’t save everyone.’

Spencer tucked his hair behind his ear a couple of times. ‘Morgan, I know it doesn’t work like that; that you don’t save someone just because you lost the one before.’

‘Just checking.’

‘I just needed to know that was possible, you know. I know it’s illogical, but-’

Morgan smiled at him. ‘Reid, relax, I get it.’

‘Oh. Well, that’s good...I guess.’

Starting the engine, Morgan hooked an arm around Spencer’s seat, and Spencer got momentarily distracted by the line of Morgan’s neck.

Back on the road, Morgan glanced at him again. ‘You okay?’

Slowly Spencer loosened his arms and lowered his legs to the floor. ‘Yeah, I think I am.’

‘If you ever need to talk-’

‘I have your cell number,’ finished Spencer. What he didn’t add was that Morgan’s number was on speed dial one.

‘Good.’ Turning into Quantico, Morgan said, ‘So when’s your next movie?’

Spencer felt his stomach turn over. He’d just admitted to Morgan that he’d been craving Dilaudid, and he’d implied that he’d been to a DA meeting, but he hadn’t stated it outright. He had thought that they were going to skirt the issue but it should have known that Morgan wouldn’t let him to that, just like Hotch wouldn’t. ‘Ah, couple of days.’

‘If you, uh...wait, stupid idea. Never mind.’

Spencer frowned. Morgan so rarely got flustered that he really wanted to know what Morgan had been thinking. ‘What were you going to say?’

‘Doesn’t matter. It was a stupid idea.’

‘It was about my next m...meeting?’

Morgan nodded as he swung the SUV into a parking space.

‘Well, what was it?’ asked Spencer, grabbing his bag and opening the door.

‘I was just thinking that if you maybe wanted a lift there or you wanted me to pick you up after...’ Morgan trailed off, obviously uncertain.

‘You, ah, you’re not busy?’ He had felt slightly off kilter after the first meeting, and having Morgan there, waiting for him, would be steadying. ‘I think I’d like that.’

Morgan looked surprised but quickly schooled his features as they walked into the building. ‘Really?’

‘I wouldn’t have said yes otherwise, would I?’

Morgan grinned at him. ‘No, I guess not.’


End file.
